Grilled Rack of Lamb

Frank is an old-timer who lives in a one-room log cabin with no running water. The power line that comes into his home is his only concession to the modern world, but he supplements it with a modest solar system he devised. If he needs to talk to one of his family members back east, he uses a satellite phone.

Frank’s cabin is almost a mile (or a little over a “click” which is slang for kilometer) from my cabin. In my post The Days Pass I explain how I met him.

Frank is an opinionated guy, and if you told him that to his face, he’d probably just grin and nod in agreement. The truth is, not everyone can stand to be around him, especially when he shoots off a fuselage of unpopular beliefs. But here’s a fact—Frank is a damned good cook. And he doesn’t skimp when laying out a spread for guests.

Whether we’re hundreds of miles from civilization chasing down moose, prospecting for gold, or just relaxing at his cabin, I can count on Frank to make one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and five-star restaurants I’ve visited be damned.

At some point during the evening, perhaps while putting away a tender moose steak, or knocking back another glass of fine liqueur post-meal, you can count on Frank to say, “I wonder what the rich people are doing tonight.”

My absolute favorite meal in Frank’s repertoire is grilled rack of lamb. He serves it with crusty garlic bread (heated on the grill), mashed rutabagas (boiled on the woodstove) smothered with melted butter, and a salad. Pre-dinner drinks are rum and Cokes (the rum measured out precisely using a shot glass, so nobody thinks they’re being cheated on alcohol), your favorite white wine for the meal, and Grand Marnier after the table has been cleared.

Frank wraps each rack of lamb separately in heavy duty aluminum foil prior to grilling them and serves them on preheated cast iron steak/fajita plates, but I prefer to avoid cooking with aluminum. Instead, I grill the racks in a covered Dutch oven that I place inside the closed BBQ.